Randy Quaid Biography News

Born: October 1, 1950 (age 63), Houston, Texas, USA
Height: 6' 5" (1.96m)
Spouse: Evi Quaid (m. 1989-present), Ella Jolly (m. 1980-1989)
Parents: Buddy Quaid, Juanita Bonniedale Jordan
Children: Amanda Quaid
 

Mini Bio :
Hollywood's most extreme character star.... Randy Quaid has never been timelier. Randy, a man who took a bus to Hollywood with nothing but raw talent, is now a proven and current vast and varied star with that one other sustaining asset - he is a great and much admired actor on the world's stage and television and feature film screens and an actor that has been recognized by Hollywood and the worlds finest directors.

Randy, who earned a Golden Globe portraying Lyndon Johnson, received a nomination in this years race for incarnating another memorable real life character, "Colonel" Tom Parker. The portrait of Colonel Parker, a former carnival barker with a murky past, is dark. The New York Times said "Mr. Quaid is riveting as the bully of Graceland", when he has Elvis firmly under his thumb, he is the L.B.J. of rock 'n' roll - a towering, wheedling, tirelessly self-promoting Southern fox in the rare instances when Elvis defies him, Colonel Parker shrinks into a hand-wringing phony, cajoling his only client in the overly ornate language of Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Oz".

Quaid stars in and Was nominated for a SAG award for his work in Brokeback Mountain (2005), directed by Ang Lee from a script written by Larry McMurtry, who also wrote The Last Picture Show (1971) in which Randy had his first feature film role. Working with McMurtry and supporting his material has become a Randy Quaid career tradition. Quaid's performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005) was listed as one of the New York Observer's 2005 Noteworthy male performances.

Randy's upcoming roles on the big screen continue his bold appetite for challenges. He most recently finished filming Goya's Ghosts (2006) for director Milos Forman. Forman cast Randy as "King Carlos IV of Spain" after seeing his Golden globe nominated performance as The Colonel. In Last Flag Flying (2010), to be directed by Richard Linklater, he will reprise his Academy award nominated performance in the sequel to The Last Detail (1973).

Spouse :

• Evi Quaid     (5 October 1989 - present)
• Ella Jolly     (11 May 1980 - 20 June 1985) (divorced) (1 child)

Trade Mark :

• Wacky, larger-than-life characters
• Towering height and broad frame

Trivia :

• Older brother of Dennis Quaid.
• Arrived in Hollywood, worked on Hollywood Boulevard as a janitor and within one year was nominated for an Oscar for The Last Detail (1973).
• Was directed by wife Evi Quaid in The Debtors (1999).
• Played the character of Doc Holliday in the movie Purgatory (1999). His brother, Dennis Quaid, played the same character in the movie Wyatt Earp (1994).
• Along with his brother Dennis Quaid, he attended Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Other celebrities attending the school at the same time included Brent Spiner ("Data" from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), although he used his adopted name, Brent Mintz) and Cindy Pickett from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). Another significant member of Bellaire High School was Coach Knoblauch, who is the father of Chuck Knoblauch, professional Major League baseball player who played for the Minnesota Twins from 1991-1997, the New York Yankees from 1998-2001, and the Kansas City Royals in 2002.
• Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard on October 7, 2003. At a Screen Actors Guild awards show, he revealed that the star was near the site of the Roosevelt Hotel, where the promising actor first arrived off a bus from Houston three decades before.
• Father of one child, Amanda Quaid, with ex-wife Ella Jolly.
• He is a first cousin, twice removed, of performer Gene Autry. Gene's maternal grandparents, Andrew Clinton Ozment and Margaret Malinda Pierce, were also Randy's paternal great-great-grandparents.
• Met his wife, Evi Quaid, on the set of Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989) in New York. Evi, 24 at the time, was a production assistant assigned to drive actors to the set.
• Enjoys painting in his spare time.
• In 1994, he lived in a home in Santa Monica, but when an earthquake destroyed it he flew to New York, checked into the Carlyle Hotel and stayed for close to a year before relocating back to Los Angeles.
• Attended the 43rd Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic. [July 2008]
• Was considered for the role of Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975);.
• Milos Forman cast Quaid as the "King of Spain" in Goya's Ghosts (2006) after seeing his work as Tom Parker in Elvis (2005) with Jonathan Rhys Meyers by phoning him and saying, "You are a great actor. You must be my King or I must repaint Goya".
• Colored his hair red and rented a fake full length fur coat from Universal for the "Slam Dance" opening night for his film Real Time (2008), the second film to be featured at "Slam Dance" starring Randy Quaid.
• A full 5 inches taller then his brother, Dennis Quaid.
• Nominated for an Oscar at the age of 21 for his work with Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973).
• Married his wife, Evi Quaid, Three times, once in Monticeto, California, once in Hollywood close to his favorite hotel and Walk of Fame star, and once in Toronto, Canada since becoming a Refugee claimant. They were married at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, California in 1989. 20 years later in 2009, they were arrested for allegedly defrauding the innkeeper, conspiracy, and burglary after allegedly skipping out on a $10,000 bill at the same hotel after an extended stay there in June 2009. Later it was learned the credit card used was overcharged by $73,000.
• Cast in The Ice Harvest (2005) when Harold Ramis called him and asked him to do it, just as he did when he asked him to do the first "Vacation" film for him that he also directed.
• Played two real-life, ceremonial colonels. Tom Parker and Harland Sanders.
• An arrest warrant was issued for Randy and his wife, Evi Quaid, for failure to show up at a Santa Barbara, California court for an unpaid hotel bill on April 14, 2010. In a plea bargain, he was found not guilty of skipping out of the bill, while Evi was sentenced to a misdemeanor on April 28.
• Brother-in-law of Kimberly Buffington Quaid.
• Ex-brother-in-law of P.J. Soles and Meg Ryan.
• Has applied for refugee status in Canada with his wife.
• Filed a lawsuit against Focus Features and producers David Linde and James Schamus in March 2006, claiming he was fleeced into working cheaply by the filmmakers' assertion that Brokeback Mountain (2005) was "a low-budget, art-house film, with no prospect of making any money." Brokeback Mountain, whose three Oscars included Best Director for Ang Lee, topped $82 million at the domestic box office. Quaid had been seeking at least $10 million but later dropped the lawsuit in May of 2006. "The circumstances of him dropping the suit are as mysterious as the circumstances under which he filed his claim," a Focus Features spokeswoman said at the time. The NYT Stated Focus had agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement.
• He was banned for life from the Actors' Equity Association as the result of fellow actors' official complaints about his behavior during the 2007 run of "Lone Star Love" -- a retelling of The Merry Wives of Windsor set in the 1860s in which Randy was cast as Colonel John Falstaff -- at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre. He was also fined $81,572 by the union for his actions in Seattle, the equivalent of two weeks' salary for the cast; all 26 members of the cast brought charges against Quaid, maintaining that he "physically and verbally abused his fellow performers and that his oddball behavior forced the show to close." Another major issue was Randy's costume, over which he insisted he had final approval (he dyed his hair beet red and wore a codpiece the size and shape of an official N.F.L. football). Reacting to Equity's decision, Quaid said, "I am guilty of only one thing: Giving a performance that elicited a response so deeply felt by the actors and producers with little experience of my creative process that they actually think I am Falstaff.".
• Has an Australian cattle dog named Doji.
• He and his wife lived for long stretches of time in high-end hotels such as the Bel-Air, and the Carlyle, in New York.
• Moved to Los Angeles, California on his 21st birthday.
• He and his wife filed for bankruptcy in 2000, owing the I.R.S. $412,000; the state of California had several tax liens against them totaling more than $207,000.
• Was the voice of Capital One Credit cards from 2004-2010.
• Uncle of Jack Quaid.
• Older stepbrother of Buddy Quaid.
• Has a stepsister Brandy Quaid.
• Cousin of Bo Brinkman. First cousin once removed of Corbett Tuck and Dakota Brinkman.
• As of 2014, has appeared in four films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: The Last Picture Show (1971), Bound for Glory (1976), Midnight Express (1978) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Personal Quotes :

• When I was a kid and the carnival would come to the shopping center, I'd go down and talk to all the people running the rides. I like that whole lifestyle, moving from town to town in a nomadic existence.
• I love playing characters that are bigger than life and maybe have a darker side they present to the world. Those are good characters.

Salary :

• Christmas Vacation (1989)     $1,000,000and 5% Gross
• Kingpin (1996)     $2,250,000
• The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)     $1,250,000
• Goya's Ghosts (2006)     $1,000,000